JEWEL (43 page)

Kind of nice, I think.”

Leston stood as Wilman came in. Wilman said, “She’s not here yet? ” and Leston shrugged, said, “You know Billie Jean.”

They shook hands, and Barbara turned, headed back toward our bedroom.

“I’m going to lay Timmy down, ” she said, but Wilman was already talking to his daddy, the two of them speaking low on how Wilman’s sales route was proving out, how the additions at El Camino were progressing.

Brad and Robert had let go of me, were over now at Annie, her still up on the stool. The two boys put out their hands, just touched the white material, and Annie glowered down at me, whispered, “Momma.”

“Come on now, boys, ” I said, “Brenda Kay and I baked some cookies the other day, and there’s still some left.”

They turned right then, took off for the kitchen.

By eight-thirty, Burton and Sarah and their children were here, and still there was no sign of Billie Jean. Mrs. Zafaris finished with the dress and was gone, clearing out at least that much room for the grandchildren to tussle and fuss in, Timmy still fast asleep in the bedroom, Jill on her hands and knees and laughing and drooling, trying to keep up. Wilman and Burton and Leston sat in the front room talking mostly of Royal Crown and all the goings on, the same talk as always.

My two sons threw out the names of their bosses and shook their heads, Leston all the time nodding away like he knew these men they talked of, when I knew all along it was just pride in his sons, they were doing fine, Wilman and Barbara getting ready to buy a house all the way down in Buena Park, out in Orange County, Burton with an eye on a house closer in, just over to Torrance.

Annie was in the kitchen with us, huddled against the wall phone, face to the corner of the room, whispering and laughing to Gene. She turned around now and again to wave off a laughing grandchild or two tugging at her. Brenda Kay was eating a cookie, scribbling on a pad of paper with one of those old red pencils left over from when Annie used to use them, just scribbling away and moaning to the music from the radio at her ear.

It was near on to her bedtime already, and she still had to have her bath. Already, too, she’d started in to whining about all the ruckus the grandchildren were making, her leaning her head to one side like she does, then letting out with a loud “Momma, please! ” testy-like, almost crying. She was used to the quiet of a house this time of night, not to all these people, all this noise.

Then, above it all, I heard a car pull up and stop out on the street, me already standing, ready for it to be her.

Everything else carried right on, no one hearing a thing, and I went into the front room, cut through the middle of the men talking, weaved my way round children, and made it to the door, opened it. “Momma, please! ” I heard Brenda Kay call out behind me, then heard Barbara say, “Boys, quiet down.”

A car was parked on the street, the engine already ticking down. It was dark out there, the only light that from a lamppost four or five houses down, so I couldn’t tell who was inside until the driver door opened up.

Then Billie Jean stepped out, cried, “Oh, Momma! ” and came to I me across the lawn. She had her arms up, a purse hanging from the crook of her elbow, and when she made it to me she almost knocked me down, so much force in her hug. She hugged me and hugged me, eight years’ worth of a hug, and I turned with her in my arms, the two of us making a slow circle there in the yard.

I pulled away from her, saw in the dark a woman’s face now, thinner, longer, her eyes harder, deeper somehow, her hair poofed up and sad high on her head, a week away from whatever fashionable Mississippi hairdo she’d gotten before she left. I saw all this in the dark of a lamppost so that she looked gray, her skin and eyes and hair all different shades of gray. Billie Jean.

“Now where’s my grandchildren? ” I said, and I turned toward the car, my arm round her waist, hers around mine.

We started to the car, and I thought I could see in the back seat the shadow outlines of two children. “Elaine? ” I said. “Matthe ? ” and squinted at the darkness inside, us almost to the sidewalk.

Billie Jean let go, went to the rear door, opened it. She stood there a moment or two like a chauffeur, her standing tall, then she leaned in, said, “You two come on out now.”

She stood up again, and I saw first two shiny black shoes, then two legs in black pants, then a white shirt and black bow tie, then a boy, a little boy standing at the curb, hands at his side, just standing there, looking at the ground.

Billie Jean let go the door handle, squatted next to him and fiddled with the tie, though it seemed perfectly straight to me.

“Matthe , ” she said, “I want you to go over and give your Grandma Hilburn a big hug. You do that.”

He didn’t look up from the ground, but started toward me, and I went to him, scared as he must have been at meeting me on a dark street like this, an old woman he’d never met, him tired as he was after five days on the road.

I took him in my arms, hugged him, Billie Jean’s baby, him already four, four, his hair greased and combed and parted in the middle. I said, “I’m so glad to meet you, Matthe . I’m your Grandma Hilburn, and I want you to know I love you.”

I tried to get him to look at me, for his eyes to meet mine so he could see exactly what I meant, that in fact I loved him, though I didn’t know him, knew him only through the parade of letters and photographs she’d sent over the years, letters filled with the daily news all our lives were filled with. Only in this way could I know how he’d busted open his chin after falling down the front porch steps not a week after he was walking, and that it’d taken seventeen stitches to put him back together. Nor could I know his first tooth had come out only two weeks ago but through his momma’s words . to me on paper, and that the tooth fairy’d left him a nickel under his pillow, which he swallowed the next morning in the belief the money was needed to grow the next tooth back into place. And only through letters could I know the other child, the one still inside the car, my granddaughter Elaine, and how she refused to let Billie Jean pick out her clothes for her, coming out of her room each morning neat and clean and dressed better than Billie Jean herself could do. Little Miss Independent, Billie Jean called her in her letters.

Still, I looked at Matthe s eyes, trying to get him to look at me. I said, “Show me that place where your tooth used to be, ” and I smiled, touched his cheek. But he wouldn’t look at me.

Billie Jean was whispering hard into the back seat now, and I thought I heard a small slap, thought maybe it was just her spanking the car seat to get her child moving, but then I heard Elaine start in to crying, and I wondered what it was to set her off.

“Billie Jean? ” I said, and stood. “You okay? ” She was pulling Elaine out, her crying loud and long now, and then I could see her, frilly dress gray out here, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, her face screwed up into a cry, Billie Jean holding her by the wrist and sliding her out onto the curb next to her brother.

“This is a fine how do you do you’re making for Grandma Hilburn, ” Billie Jean said, and still the child cried, put her free hand to her face, rubbed back tears I couldn’t see.

“There, there, ” I said. “It’s been a long trip, I know.”

“We’d of been here earlier if it weren’t for the traffic, ” she said above her daughter’s crying.

“And if we didn’t have to stop, put on Sunday clothes, ” Matthe half-whispered, his head still down.

I laughed at that, trying hard to calm down the air out here, but it didn’t work. His comment only served, it seemed, to set Billie Jean off.

“Now don’t you start up with me, Matthe , ” she said, and I could tell her teeth were clenched. “Just you don’t.”

“I won’t, ” he said.

“He can if he wants, ” Elaine said, all that crying suddenly gone. She wasn’t even breathing hard. “He can pitch a fit if he wants. We can do whatever we want. Papa told us so.”

“Don’t, ” Billie Jean whispered. “You don’t.”

“They’re divorced, ” Elaine said right then, her eyes on her momma.

“What? ” I said, and swallowed hard, took a breath.

Elaine’s mouth was straight, no smile or frown or anything there. Only this child’s gray face, a gray dress, beside her her gray brother and her gray momma. She was watching her momma, watching her, I saw, to see what she’d do. l l

“Oh, Momma! ” Billie Jean cried out even louder then, let go Elaine’s hand. She made fists of her hands, put them to her eyes, my oldest daughter like a child all over again, crying.

“What? ” I said again. I let go Matthe , felt dazed, though my body automatically did what a momma needed to do right then, I went to Billie Jean, held her tight, rocked her. And then I cried, too. I opened my eyes a moment or so, saw the two of them, these displaced children, surprised and puzzled at all of this as any children would be, their momma suddenly made small enough to be a child, the child of this old woman they’d never laid eyes on.

“Two years, ” Billie Jean cried, “two years, ” and she sobbed.

A moment later I felt new hands on me, and I opened my eyes, saw Barbara and Annie and Sarah crowded round us, smiles on their faces, and I realized they hadn’t heard Elaine’s words, them believing these tears we were giving out were tears of joy, tears being spent on a long overdue welcome to Billie Jean and her children.

The knot of us turned, headed toward the door, where more people spilled out, Burton and Wilman, then the grandkids, all of them clustering round us as we finally made it to the door, where Leston stood, hands on hips, smiling.

“Daddy, ” she said, and she tried her best, I could see, to sniff back her tears, catch hold her breath, smile up at him. But it was no use, she looked at him a moment longer, then burst out again, her face in the light from inside all red now, no longer that dead gray out at the curb.

Her face was red with crying, and I leaned hard into her, held her tight. Take hold of it, I thought. Make it work.

My breath was hollow, short, my fingers tingling with the sharp edge of the news she’d brought, real news, not that she’d passed off in what now seemed useless letters. Gower Cross, I thought, and suddenly saw Burton flinching at that name the day we’d driven into Los Angeles and’d told him his sister’d married him. All I knew of this Gower Cross was that he worked long hours and traveled a lot. That was all I knew of him, and then, just as suddenly, I saw how little I knew of my own Billie Jean, her able to hide so well her life from us, only to have the darkest and biggest secret she could carry coughed up by her own daughter.

I held her even tighter, whispered into her ear just loud enough for only her to hear in the midst of all this commotion, “You just hug your daddy. We’ll talk about this later. Just don’t you worry none.” And still I didn’t know what I’d say to her, how I could keep her from worrying, and now the tingling moved from my fingers into my hands, started creeping into my arms. I knew nothing of what to do next.

She nodded through her crying, and left my arms for her daddy’s only a couple feet away.

I turned from everyone, looked back for Matthe and Elaine.

The other grandkids stood round them out at the car, Matthe and Elaine dressed up and shiny, the others messy and beat from a day at hard play.

They all stood off from Billie Jean’s children, a loose circle, none of the children saying a word, only sizing each other up.

I crossed the lawn and neared them, said to the regulars, “Now y’all scoot, let these children get some air, ” and slowly they scattered, Brad and Robert and Susan and Jill backing away a few steps before jumping into the old routine of running and screaming, this night an extra treat, I knew, what with staying up late and being out on the street in the dark. “On in the house, ” I shouted after them. “Go introduce yourselves to Aunt Billie Jean, ” I said. They stopped the circles they were making in the yard, arms out, Robert and Jeannie already staggering a little though they’d just started twirling. “Now get on, ” I said.

They turned, headed back inside, where they started laughing again.

“Momma, please! ” I heard Brenda Kay cry, even out here in the street.

“Bath, Momma! ” she yelled.

But I stooped down there in the yard, looked Elaine and Matthe straight in the eye, and I said, “Now I don’t want to start out things in the wrong way. I want you to know right out that I love you both. I’m your grandma.” I paused, said, “You understand that? ” They looked at the ground then, at the grass, slowly nodded. “Yes’m, ” Matthe said, and Elaine whispered, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Fine manners, ” I said, and smiled, though they still wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t know what you all been through, but I’m certain of one thing only, it’s not been pleasant.”

At this Matthe started to sniffing, reached up and rubbed his nose.

“But you’re at my house now, my and your granddaddy’s house, and we’re here to take care of you, because we love you.” I paused again, said, “Do you understand that, too? ” They both nodded.

“Then what I want you to do for now is just to keep quiet about the problem. You know, about the ” “The divorce, ” Elaine whispered. She looked up at me, and put two fingers to her lips, made the old move like she was twisting a key. “My lips are sealed. Matthe ? ” She nudged him with an elbow.

His head still down, him still sniffing, he quick brought two fingers to his mouth, twisted them like a key just as his sister had.

“Itcome out, and everybody’ll know, ” I said, and smiled, though suddenly the huge size of all this slammed into me.

“It’ll come, ” I said again, “and we’ll all of us know, but you got my guarantee there’s nobody going to love you any less for it. Nobody. I love you. Your granddaddy loves you. Your aunts and uncles and all those cousins love you. They do.” They were words just coming out of me now, loose and free, but taking on their own meaning in spite of that. It was the truth, we loved them, we did. Maybe I even loved them more now than I would have because of whatever it was they’d gone through.

Divorce. Divorce was what they’d been through, and I saw how little I knew, too, of that whole ugly territory. All I knew of it was a man walking toward my house when I was a little girl, a man who smelled of pomade and who patted my head. I never even knew if my parents were divorced or not, though they might as well have been. And that was when I reached a hand to both of them, touched the cheeks of both my grandchildren, because what I did know was the pain I’d carried with me, the pain buried deep in me, planted by the sorrow in my own mother, the touch of my father’s hand on my head. These two children had their own pain, no pain I could ever know because it belonged to them. But I had my own, and hoped that by my touch they might see I knew a piece of what they held in their own hearts. Just a piece of that pain.